23 December 1946
Snow was falling in Paris. As he made his way through the streets Lucien Blake could not stop himself from raising his face towards the steel-grey sky, smiling like a school boy as the snowflakes melted on his face and beard, cold and soft as kisses. He was the only one who seemed enamored with the snow; his fellow pedestrians walked with their chins tucked in their coats and their parcels clutched tight to their chests. The war was long over, now, but signs of devastation lingered all around the city; the hollowed out factories stood silent and still, the rationing - of bread, coffee, sugar and the like - continued, and the communists whispered in the shadows. This had once been Lucien's favorite city on earth, and he was certain that it would be again, with time, but for now it was a grey place, a cold place, and a hard one. After everything this city and its people had endured Lucien could not blame them for their flinty-eyed stares and their closed lips, wrapped tight around the ends of contraband cigarettes. The war had changed him, too.
The hardening of Lucien Blake's heart had begun in Singapore, when word reached him that the ship bearing his wife and daughter had sunk, that Mei Lin was gone and Li had been spirited away to an orphanage deep in the Chinese countryside. Lucien had been promptly captured by the Japanese, left to languish under insufferable conditions in a POW camp for three long years, and by the time he was liberated he found the war over, and China closed to white men eager to reclaim their children. He was doing what he could, appealing to friends in government to speak on his behalf, begging everyone he could for aid, but the country remained closed to him, and Li remained just out of his reach. Another six months, Lucien, Derek kept telling him. It had already been a year.
To keep himself from going mad with grief while he waited for the chance to hold his daughter in his arms once more Lucien continued to serve his country, in administration, and to that end he had been sent to Paris. The first election following the end of the occupation had resulted in massive gains for the communist party, and likewise expats from all over the world - Korea and French Indochina, most alarmingly - gathered there, whispering together in dark corners about a new world order. Lucien had been sent to eavesdrop on those whispers in the interest of his country; as the world recovered from the havoc wrought by fascism, the next wave of dangerous ideology had reared its head in the east, and Lucien knew that for all their rhetoric about peace the British Empire and their Allies in France and the United States were ready and willing to fight tooth and nail to retain the status quo and defeat the encroaching red wave in Asia, whatever the cost. Unbeknownst to his superiors Lucien found that his personal politics aligned more closely with the communist agitators than with his own government, but he resented any social or political movement which required absolute dedication from its adherents and subjects. That was how he justified the spying to himself; he did not fall firmly into either camp, and if by relaying information from one to the other he might somehow create a sort of balance, then he would count himself successful indeed.
To that end he made his way along the river, heading for a run-down, abandoned opera house that languished empty and unused following the occupation. There were pigeons roosting in the empty window frames where the glass had been shattered by the shelling of the German invaders, and a makeshift door made of half-rotten plywood barred entry, held in place by a heavy chain and padlock. It was no difficult thing to sneak into the building, however, for the bombs had also ruined some of the brickwork around the back, and a hole remained just large enough for a man to slip through, his progress hidden from view as only the most nefarious of passers-by used this alley way. The opera house had been grand and beautiful once, soaring like a cathedral by the river, but now it was only a ghost of its former self, and no music played in its grand hall to entertain finely dressed patrons of an evening. It was a rather depressing place to be, with Christmas approaching and his daughter thousands of miles from his side, but Lucien had arranged to meet with a representative of the Viet Minh, the communist party under Ho Chi Minh who had declared the independence of Vietnam from the French colonizers. Paris was a dangerous place for such a man to be, as the French gathered their strength to subdue the uprising in what they still firmly referred to as French Indochina, but Lucien's contact was desperately trying to drum up support from the French communists, in the hopes that their shared ideology might carry more weight than their nationalist loyalties. Lucien lied through his teeth, told the man that he was sympathetic, and prepared himself to do whatever it took to gain as much intelligence from his informer as he could while also keeping the man alive. England and France might have preferred Lucien to slide a knife between his ribs, but Major Blake was in his heart a doctor first and foremost, and he took the obligation Primum non nocere more seriously than any oath he had made to King and country.
As he made his way through the dusty back corridor of the opera house there was no sound, no movement, only the weight of memories heavy upon his shoulders. This place had been a temple dedicated to beauty once, but now it stood forlorn as a crumbling tomb, preternaturally still while every inch of its once grand facade whispered with the voices of thousands of ghosts. The world had changed, irreversibly, and the opera house had been left behind.
Lucien's assignation was set for the balcony of the main hall, and his steps took him along the mouldering carpet without any direction from his distracted mind. They had met here before several times, Lucien and his Asian informer, and given that neither of them had been waylaid so far he was fairly comfortable with their routine. As comfortable as he could be; in the intelligence gathering business, routine was often dangerous, but his mark was jittery and did not respond well to sudden changes in plan. Up the stairs he went, trailing his fingertips along the worn wooden railing, listening to the sighing of the opera house around him, his ears trained for the slightest sound, his eyes darting round him constantly, wary and watchful.
In a moment he emerged onto the balcony, and what he saw stopped him in his tracks. There was no sign of his contact, but the reason for the man's absence was made abundantly clear as Lucien stepped up to the railing. The hall was not empty.
There on the stage, with no lights, no music, the beautiful red velvet curtain hanging in tatters and the luxurious boards worn in places by time and the passage of German bootheels, a single woman was dancing, alone and graceful, the sight of her so lovely and so sad that Lucien collapsed at once into the nearest seat, covering his mouth with his hand as he watched her in awe and silent wonder.
The dancer was too far away for him to make out many details, but he could see enough. She was dressed in close-fitting trousers and a lightweight linen blouse, her dark hair a tumble of elegant curls. Her face was hidden from him, but the line of her body, the lift of her arms, the strength of the toned muscles in her calves that lifted her effortlessly onto her toes called out to him. Though only she could hear the beat that kept her twirling there upon the empty stage the lithe and enchanting movements of her fragile frame spoke to him of loss, of grief, of the enduring resilience of the human heart; she was far too thin and performing for an empty theater, and yet still, she danced. What could have inspired her to do such a thing, Lucien asked himself; what force could have called a woman who had starved and languished under a violent occupation to now, in this moment of uncertain peace, this moment when deprivation and despair still reigned in the most beautiful city on earth, cast aside the shackles of her heartache and dance?
Once more she twirled, one pirouette swirling exquisitely into another, and Lucien watched her, spellbound and enraptured. It was four years since he'd lost his wife, one year and several months since he had been freed from the camp, and for the first time in a very long while he had looked upon a woman, and found his heart full of yearning. Yes, she was beautiful, lovely as a dream, but it was more than that; her actions spoke of a spirit that could not be broken, a strength that called to him.
But in the next moment she stumbled, her ankle giving way beneath her, and she collapsed helplessly upon the stage. Though he was too far away to reach her Lucien lept to his feet anyway, as if there was some way he might be able to help her, to save her, but any intentions he may have harbored of calling out to her, of offering her aid, were dispelled in a moment as he watched her bury her face in her hands, as the gentle sound of her weeping wafted up to him. The dream of beauty she had painted there upon the stage faded beneath the dark reality of their world, and Lucien bowed his head and slipped away, leaving the dancer alone with her grief. She did not leave him quite so easily, however, for throughout the rest of that day and the long hours of the night she haunted him, spinning round and round in his mind. Who was she? Why was she there? Would she ever be happy again? Lucien could not say, but he brooded on those questions nonetheless.